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The Process of Innovation in Computing: A Personal 30-Year Perspective

Walt ScacchiInstitute for Software Research

UCIrvine24 April 2008

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~wscacchi/Presentations/InnovationInComputing.pdf

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Overview

• Preliminaries and definitions• Early computing innovation studies (<1980)• Developing computing innovation studies

(1980-1990)• Transforming organizations through

computing innovation studies (1990-2000)• Multi-modal computing innovation studies

(>2000)

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Preliminaries and definitions• Process of innovation in computing

– A trajectory of situated activities people perform to displace the status quo through a web of socio-technical resources, work situations, and interaction networks

• Computing innovation– Adds to or redistributes access to the available supply

of computing resources, work situations, and interaction networks

• Unit of analysis– Life history of a computing innovation in a complex

organizational setting

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Preliminaries and definitions

• Innovation life cycle stages– Discovery or invention– Development– Diffusion– Adoption– Implementation– Routinization– Evolution (debugging, accretion, tuning, restructuring,

merger, migration, retirement, reinvention)

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Organizational field sites• Andersen Consulting LLP • AT&T and AT&T Bell Laboratories• Bayfront Technologies, Inc.• BellCore• Computer Science Dept., USC• Daegu Global R&D Collaboration Center• Defense Acquisition University• Discovery Science Center• Eastman Kodak• EDS• Enabling Business Technologies LLC • EON Reality• Ernst and Young LLP • Fujitsu• GDE Systems Inc. • Hewlett-Packard• Holosofx Inc. (Active Management Inc.)• Hughes Aircraft• IBM • Intel • Intelligent Systems Technology Inc.• Knowledge System Laboratory, Stanford

University

• MCC• McKesson • Naval Air Warfare Center• Naval Ocean Systems Center• Naval Postgraduate School• New Directions Technologies Inc.• Northrop-Grumman • Office of Naval Research• Pacific Bell • Pacific Life• Perceptronics• Physics Dept., UCI• Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie-

Mellon University• SUN Microsystems• TRW• USC Advanced Biotechnology Center• USC Entertainment Technology Center • USC Information Sciences Institute• Virtual organizations (about 20 Web-based

projects developing free/open source software)

• WICOR (Wisconsin Gas)• Withheld (another dozen in litigation support)

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Early computing innovation studies (<1980)

Consumption of computing innovations

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Case study: DoD production of a software innovation (Ada programming language)

• 1973, U.S. Department of Defense reports spending >$3B annually on software development, deployment, and support– Upwards of 90% of software costs go to “maintenance”

• 1975-1979 DoD invests $$$ in the invention and development of new programming language for embedded military applications– Language called Green, DoD-1, then Ada

• Was this a good idea/approach?

R. Kling and W. Scacchi, The DoD Common High Order Programming Language Effort (DoD-1): What Will the Impacts Be?, S IGPLAN Notices, 14(2), 29-41, 1979.

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Predicting the future consumption of Ada as a software innovation

• Problematics:– Why does software cost so much to produce and

consume?– How do DoD contractor business practices drive the

cost of software?• Observations:

– Contractor financial operations treat software development as a liability, and software maintenance as a revenue

– Financial conditions distort software production costs– Be careful for what you hope to realize through

computing innovations

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Other consequences that followed

• Kling and Scacchi subjected to criticism and career threats by DoD software researchers

• Senior military officials endorse KS79 observations• Scacchi engaged by DoD Ada Office (1982) to design

software production program focus for future Software Engineering Institute– Software production process– Software technology transfer process (innovation life cycle)– SEI-CMU launches in 1985 with these programs– MCC also adopts STT process program focus in 1986

• Be careful for what advice you offer for computing innovation processes and practices.

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Process of Innovation in Computing (1977-1980)

Fitting, packaging, and cycling

Regulating and stabilizing

Tinkering and layering

Expanding and demanding

Innovation Processes

Mirroring and pacing

Computer-based work environment

Text processing system

Processor memory and disk storage

upgrades

Knowledge Systems Lab

StructuringUser-specialist liaisons

Database management

facilities

Distributed computing systems (mini-computers)

Pacific Life

Hassling and distracting

CPU usage charge-back mechanism

Operating system upgrade

Computer graphics terminals

UCI Physics

Innovation Processes

OrganizationalSoftwareHardware \ InnovationO \R \G \

W. Scacchi, The Process of Innovation in Computing: A Study in the Social Dynamics of Computing, Unpublished Dissertation, Information and Computer Science Dept., UC Irvine, 1981.

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Additional findings• History of commitments constrains choice• Narrow incentives and opportunities motivate choice• Macrostructural patterns influence local computing• Distribution of computing resources and system

configurations is tied to the career contingencies of local participants

• Computing innovations enable new use, and use create demand for computing innovations

• Innovation in computing is a continuous process.

R. Kling and W. Scacchi, The Web of Computing: Computer Technology as Social Organization, in M. Yovits (Ed.), Advances in Computers, 21, 2-90, 1982.

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Developing computing innovation studies (1980-1990)

Production of computing innovations

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Case study: Understanding innovation development teamwork

• Comparative analysis of teamwork practices when formally specifying a software innovation to develop in complex setting.– USC System Factory Project (1981-1992)– Five graduate student teams, 5-7 members, two-week

(part-time) process that incorporates planning, formal notation, automated tool use, reusable examples, documentation tasks, and team shared responsibility.

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What to Understand

• Work Structures and Shifts: Resource arrangements, historical circumstances, division of labor and expertise, etc.

• Work Processes: Routine, habitual or emergent patterns of how work flows among people through/onto work structures

• Work Practices: Behavioral discourse and social dynamics enacted through work processes

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What to Understand• Work structures are domain independent

constructs– Prescriptive/descriptive abstractions

• Processes are classes of workflow– Descriptive and derived – Prescriptive and composed

• Practices are instances– Descriptive, historic and situated

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Comparative analysis of software innovation production teamwork

– Six work structure types observed: Negotiated, Integrated, Replicated, Delegated, Prediscriminated and Separated

– Three types of structural shift observed: • anticipated ->, • unanticipated -->>, • role shift within work structure +.

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Work structures and shifts (data)Team ID T1 T2 T3 T4 T5Team Size 6 7 7 7 5Reusable Exemplar no yes yes yes yesPROCESSA. Pre-planning task N->R->I N->R->I N->R->I N->R->I N->R->IB. Planning task N N N N N c. I I I I -> S I -> Sd. I I+ I S Se. P (D,I,I) P (D,I,I) P (D,I,I) P (D,S->I,I) P (D,D,I)f. D D D D Dg. R R R D Dh. D I I D DC. Develop preliminary I -->> I+ I+ I+ -> S+ I -> S+(informal) specification N -->>

R -->> ID. Develop formal I+ I+ I+ S+ -->> S+(processable) spec. N -->>E. Document N -->> D P+ P+ N -->> P(D,D,I)write-up P(D,S->I,D)F. Documentation D -->> D+ D+ D+ D+integration N -->> IG. Document review R R R N -->> R DH. Prepare for D -->> I+ N -->> I+ N -->> I+ D+Delivery N -->> I

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Findings• Highest (lowest) quality product (measured

by automated tools): T1 (T5)• Highest (lowest) productivity (self reported

time expended): T5 (T1)• Note the coincidental relationship• Effectiveness of planning, automated tool

use, asset reuse not clearly associated with high(low) quality or high(low) productivity

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Findings• Teams enacting primarily into Negotiative

and Integrative structures had higher quality• Teams enacting primarily into Delegative,

Pre-discriminative or Separative structures had higher productivity

• Computer supported work environments must account for teamwork structures as a usage parameter to be most effective.

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Transforming organizations through computing innovation

studies (1990-2000)

Going meta

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Case study: Designing large-scale production operations

• Major TelCo (AT&T) wants to develop broadband multi-media telecommunications system

• Anticipates $1B development, up to1500 system developers working 2-3 years

• Seeks industrial partners to provide supporting infrastructure to reduce risk

• IT partner (HP) wants to showcase new “process support technology” products as sales lead

• IT partner brings in my academic research team (USC Atrium Lab) to analyze and advise TelCo on “production process design issues”

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The story continues

• Team, IT partner, and TelCo jointly elicit, capture, codify (formalize) and inter-relate TO-BE system development process.– (Re)Design organizational computing innovation

• Team employs IT partner’s products to present results of their “process analysis”

• Team view of their effort -- a major computing innovation success for publication (and re-publication)

P.K. Garg, P. Mi, T. Pham, W. Scacchi, and G. Thunquest, The SMART Approach to Software Process Engineering, Proc. 16th. Intern. Conf. S oftware Engineering , IEEE Computer Society, Sorrento, Italy, pp. 341-350, (May 1994). Reprinted in Process-Centered S oftware Engineering Environments , P.K. Garg and M. Jazayeri (eds.), IEEE Computer Society, pp. 131-140, (1996)

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A complex organizational process: a decomposition-precedence relationship view (19 levels of decomposition, 400+ tasks)

W. Scacchi, Experience with Software Process Simulation and Modeling, J. Systems and Software, 46(2/3):183-192,1999.

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The story ends• Team suggests overall process won’t succeed -- too

complex, too much delegation, problematic hand-offs (“throwing it over the wall”)

• TelCo and IT partner dismisses academic team• Less than one year later, IT vendor abandons innovative

process technology product• Two years later, business press reports TelCo experiences

major project failure and losses greater than $200M, and no operational system.

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Case Study: Transforming procurement processes at ONR

• Present an approach for how to optimize business processes including software production

• Identify key concepts, techniques, and tools that enable better optimization

• Describe optimization transformations from business process redesign studies

• Describe opportunity areas for exploitation and use

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Definitions and Differences • Software production: enterprise processes and

resources that produce software• Production strategies: business strategies

guiding overall approach to building software systems

• Production architecture: configuration of enterprise capabilities to enact strategies

• Optimizing production: minimizing enterprise configuration to maximize strategic outcomes

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(Re)designing production processes• Which process first: to-be goal vs. as-is mess?

– If you don’t know where you are, any road will do (proverb)

– Observation: people at work cannot describe the processes they do with high fidelity (tacit knowledge lemma)

– Redesign necessitates understanding as-is, to-be, and here-to-there processes

• Creating high-performance work groups– Empowerment, participation, incentivization (resource

sovereignty), and recognition (patronage, status, accomplishment)

W. Scacchi, Redesigning Contracted Service Procurement for Internet-based Electronic Commerce: A Case Study, J. Information Technology and Management, 2(3), 313-334, 2001.

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Generic Strategies• Reduce costs• Reduce cycle time • Improve cash flow• Increase customer

satisfaction• Increase sales• Improve customer service

• Increase productivity• Open new markets• Open new “channels”• Become innovation leader• Increase market share• Enable just-in-time service

delivery

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Enterprise Production Architecture• A composite model that interrelates

– software system architecture– software production architecture– development organization architecture– information network infrastructure and

development tools/environment configuration – documentation architecture– customer-support knowledge base architecture

P. Mi and W. Scacchi, A Meta-Model for Formulating Knowledge-Based Models of Software Development, Decision Support Systems, 17(4):313-330, 1996.

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Optimizing Production

• Strategies provide global constraints or opportunities for optimizing production

• Constraints and opportunities realized in production setting

• Constraints and opportunities are distributed across the production architecture

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Optimizing Production

• Optimization must address composite production architecture

• Local optimization of any component architecture does not guarantee global optimality of software production

• Diagnostic analyses and transformation heuristics applied to composite architectural models lead to optimization opportunities

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Optimizing Production

• Transformation heuristics classified taxonomically

• Taxonomy classifies domain-independent (DI) and domain-specific (DS) heuristics

• DI transformations applied in any software production setting

• DS transformations applied to specific component architectures

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Optimizing Production

• DI transformation classes (sample):– Job scope– Worker empowerment– Organization design– Workflow streamlining– Information technology (IT)

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Research grant justification and approval process at Office of Naval Research (c. 1995)

W. Scacchi and J. Noll, Process-Driven Intranets: Life Cycle Support for Process Reengineering , IEEE Internet Computing, 1(5):42-49, 1997.

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Optimizing Production

• IT transformation sub-classes (sample):– Extend IT-based support to manual process

steps – Extend IT-based communication facilities to

encourage information sharing activities – Extend IT-based automation to incorporate new

kinds of application packages – Extend IT-based integration to interconnect and

interrelate existing "islands of automation"

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As-is vs. to-be process

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Redesign/Optimization (Innovation) Results

• Reduction in procurement process cycle times of 20X, annual operational savings of $10M-15M.– Via transformation and realignment of information

systems, business processes, corporate strategy, and work practices in a 1-2 year time frame.

– Participatory design, development and refinement of computational models of new work processes, resource configurations and work practices, together as an organizational system.

W. Scacchi, Redesigning Contracted Service Procurement for Internet-Based Electronic Commerce: A Case Study, Information Technology and Management, 2(3):313-334, 2001.

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Tools and Techniques• Software process redesign case web • Knowledge web for software production• Process-driven intranets• Organizational transformation

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Computing innovations enabling other computing innovations

• Process redesign (organizational innovation) case web

• Knowledge web for producing and consuming computing innovations:– Software production ontology– Taxonomy for as-is diagnosis, redesign heuristics– Best practices and lessons learned cross-linked

• Engage in organizational transformation projects

W. Scacchi and A. Valente, Developing a Knowledge Web for Business Process Redesign, Presented at the 1999 Knowledge Acquisition Workshop, Banff, Canada, October 1999.

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Multi-modal computing innovation studies (>2000)

How to go exponential

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Current field studies• Understanding open source software practices and

processes in different domains– Academic research <---> Commercial development

• Deep space astronomy and bioinformatics• Internet infrastructure• Administrative/electronic business computing• Networked computer games

• To produce and compare case studies using– (informal) ethnographic narratives– (semi-structured) hypertext, and – (formal) computational models.

Power law distribution

OSSD Projects as innovation engines

• Social/technical innovations in OSSD projects emerge via: – Enhancing project resources

• Inter-project mergers• Creating new software development artifacts

– Tuning adjustments or adaptations• Intra-team role migration• Incremental product releases (“daily builds”)

– Restructuring transformations• Legal incorporation• Code refactoring

– Reinvention practices• Learning from others• Commercial product feature replication

FOSS Evolution

OSSD multi-project ecology as an innovation frontier

• OSSD multi-project ecosystem: a (virtual) enterprise that collectively mobilizes an inter-related group of OSSD projects– Barclays Global Investments, Google Summer of Code, Apache

Software Foundation, SUN Microsystems, etc.• Frontier: a zone of unsettled land outside the region of existing

settlements suitable suitable for exploration and potential development

• Innovation frontier: a socio-technical zone for innovation outside of existing enterprise system settlements suitable for exploration and potential development.

Enabling exponential growth for socio-technical innovation frontiers

• The most successful OSSD projects exhibit sustained exponential growth via social and technical innovations

• Exponential growth requires critical mass for collective innovation action– Critical mass emerges through sufficiently dense socio-technical

networks that act as “small worlds”– Such networks emerge when participants enjoy making

social/technical contributions that serve to advance the accumulation of common pool resources

FOSS Social Networking across projects

Closing remarks

• To be clear, nearly all enterprises and OSSD projects do not obtain exponential innovation growth.

• High, sustained growth OSSD projects do exhibit exponential innovation growth when proper conditions exist.– When innovation becomes participatory and self-serving, when

innovations contribute to common pool resources, and when sustained collective action emerges as a social movement that transcends enterprise boundaries.

• Possible for enterprises to achieve exponential innovation growth.

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Findings • In addition to those from 1981,• Innovation in computing is routine

– Producing computing innovations is “easy”– Consuming computing innovation is demanding

• Continuous innovation (in the case of open source software) can enable exponential growth of socio-technical interaction networks– What will limit the exponential growth of such

innovation?

Details• W. Scacchi, Understanding Free/Open Source Software Evolution, in N.H.

Madhavji, J.F. Ramil and D. Perry (eds.), Software Evolution and Feedback: Theory and Practice, 181-206, John Wiley and Sons Inc, New York, 2006.

• W. Scacchi, Emerging Patterns of Intersection and Segmentation when Computerization Movements Interact, to appear in K.L. Kraemer and M. Elliott (eds.), Computerization Movements and Technology Diffusion: From Mainframes to Ubiquitous Computing, Information Today, Inc., 2008.

• Funding support through research grants from the National Science Foundation (no endorsement implied) #0083075, #0205679, #0205724, #0350754, #0534771, and #0749353.